Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Rioo]

Tradition is not a sufficiently strong argument to reject change if change is necessary for other reasons. The Identity of bears-tanks is changing. A lot of the doom and gloom in this thread is about balancing issues which are still changing erratically...

But a lot of people like bear for being this meat shield. We don't block, we just eat the big hits (or avoid them). It's been like that since TBC with crushing blows. I think it's really important for Blizzard to realize that certain players play certain tanks, and if they change the core aspects they might lose the players all together.

In short, if they need to change tanks that's fine, but change them to still fit the player base of the spec.

[Raugnaut]

Tradition is not a sufficiently strong argument to reject change if change is necessary for other reasons. The Identity of bears-tanks is changing. A lot of the doom and gloom in this thread is about balancing issues which are still changing erratically...

You say the identity of Bears is changing, and I have to ask- what to?

The latest 2 builds seems to have just gutted, hamstrung, and knee-capped bear tanks into being nothing more then a humongous mana sponge with a near-macroable rotation and only 1 viable gearing method.

[Bearshield]

When I hop on my warrior I feel like a battlefield superstar charging, leaping, you just have so many options from the core class kit that help your spec be better, if anything I would say we moved from a hybrid tax to a utility tax when it comes to guardians.

This is something that has bothered me all through MoP and I agree with you completely. We've lost our versatility, we've lost our mobility, and we've lost our utility. We are watered down warriors now with a fraction of the toolkit. I realize this isn't the point of this thread, but I just thought I'd let you know you're not alone.

[Mandibleclaw]

Well I actually have to say that I liked and was fine with the way we tanked in MoP. Imo they only had to fix the shitty mastery, and our identity was fine. Few talents needed some help, some became obsolete with mechanics and philosophy changes and new stats on Blizz part for WoD, so some talents needed revamps retweaks, but bears where awesome for me the way they were in MoP, our "identity" was clear. To be honest I would just be content with a new mastery along with pulverize.

But no. they needed to take a charge of Savage defense cz it's wasnt unreliable enough, it needs to be more unreliable. They had to take down our armor bcz u know, either u gear a lot of mastery for more armor (MoP), or if u shit on the mastery we gave u, next expansion no armor for jouuu. I know it's the first phase of tuning, it's not over yet, but if bears stay the way they know I wont be going to WoD. I hate the current model of bears.

[Dreyen]

Left in everything else? Have you looked at the numbers lately? We have the lowest dmg reduction from armor, lowest physical dmg reduction, and the lowest avoidance of all the tanks AND now they've nerfed our rage into dust and hit our mastery too. So what exactly are we left with? Oh yeah, a massive HP pool that will make the healers cringe when they see a bear enter the room. I'm sorry but I'd gladly trade some of that health for some mitigation.

And I agree with Exochaft, identity matters and it feels like we have lost ours.

You're exagerating.

We have the highest active avoidance along with monks.
We have by FAR the highest hp in an incredible way, this makes us the most resilient tank for magical damage. Believe we still have the 25% magic DR.. bearform tooltip sounds bugged.
Our self-healing is still really strong, they nerfed the rage gen but not the 1/3hp bar worthy heals, makes up for the loss of damage reduction.
Rage gen isn't nerfed to oblivion either.
Our mastery is an amazing damage smoother, probably why we aren't highest armor anymore.
And we have the best cooldowns of every tank.

P.S.: Nature's vigil does a LOT of healing (lvl90 mangle crits heal for 120k.. i have 150k hp!) and we have tons of movement stuff/cc/pushbacks/etc... sounds like great utility in a world where the other tanks lost most of it.

[Braindwen]

P.S.: Nature's vigil does a LOT of healing (lvl90 mangle crits heal for 120k.. i have 150k hp!)

sure.... if you're hitting stuff from old expansions.

NV/DoC are really quite pathetic atm on beta, NV with Berserk hitting 3 targets is in the 2-300k range for total healing, barely 1 person's health bar, and closer to half of one person's health bar without berserk. HotW, on the other hand, is good for ~125-150k healing per rejuv cast for 45s. It's something else that probably needs to come down a bit, mostly because they still need to fix us healing in cat form (and feral healing in bear form).

[Bearshield]

You're exagerating.

We have the highest active avoidance along with monks.
We have by FAR the highest hp in an incredible way, this makes us the most resilient tank for magical damage. Believe we still have the 25% magic DR.. bearform tooltip sounds bugged.
Our self-healing is still really strong, they nerfed the rage gen but not the 1/3hp bar worthy heals, makes up for the loss of damage reduction.
Rage gen isn't nerfed to oblivion either.
Our mastery is an amazing damage smoother, probably why we aren't highest armor anymore.
And we have the best cooldowns of every tank.

P.S.: Nature's vigil does a LOT of healing (lvl90 mangle crits heal for 120k.. i have 150k hp!) and we have tons of movement stuff/cc/pushbacks/etc... sounds like great utility in a world where the other tanks lost most of it.

I wasn't talking about "active" avoidance, but if you want to bring that into the equation we can't ignore the fact that Warriors, Paladins, and Monks can "actively" mitigate a CRAPTON more than Druids now. I'm not exagerating anything, these are numbers that the Paladin, Aribethe of Kael'thas was nice enough to put together on the beta forum. They are from after the first big nerf patch, before this last one that hit our mastery:

Tank Stamina Modifier Comparison

Bonus from wearing appropriate armor type appears to be multiplicative with Tank Bonus (tested with no stat bracers, appears to be some rounding error but difference was minimal enough to assume multiplicative)
PW: Fortitude appears multiplicative also.

Warrior - 32.825% (15% * 5% * 10%) Tank Bonus * Plate Bonus * PW:Fort
Paladin - 44.375% (25% * 5% * 10%) Tank Bonus * Plate Bonus * PW:Fort
Death Knight - 58.8125% (25% * 5% * 10% * 10%) Blood Presence * Tank Bonus * Plate Bonus * PW:Fort
Monk - 61.7% (40% * 5% * 10%) Ox Stance * Leather Bonus * PW:Fort
Druid - 84.8% (60% * 5% * 10%) Bear Form * Leather Bonus * PW:Fort

Tank Damage Reduction Comparison

Physical Damage Reduction

Warrior - 25% (30% with Gladiator's Resolve)
Monk - 25%
Paladin - 15%
Death Knight - 10%
Druid - 0%

Magic Damage Reduction

Warrior - 25% (30% with Gladiator's Resolve)
Monk - 25%
Druid - 25%
Paladin - 15%
Death Knight - 10%

Tank Armor Modifiers

Monk - Leather
Druid - +330% Leather
Death Knight - +55% Plate
Paladin - +10% Plate+Shield
Warrior - +40% Plate+Shield

Tank Armor Comparison

Calculated using Level 100 PVP server PVP Gear(ilvl 660)

DR against level 103 calculated using 5234 K value. need to confirm this

Monk - 877 Armor - 14.35% DR vs lvl 103 attacker
Druid - 3771 Armor - 41.88% DR vs lvl 103 attacker
Death Knight - 3990 Armor - 43.36% DR vs lvl 103 attacker
Paladin - 4803 Armor - 47.85% DR vs lvl 103 attacker
Warrior - 6112 Armor - 53.87% DR vs lvl 103 attacker

Like I said, those numbers are not my work, but as you can see, our health is literally ALL we have now and that in itself can be both a blessing and a curse. And where is the "tons of movement stuff" we have? You mean the choice between Feral Charge and Feral Swiftness when we used to have access to both? And all tanks have some limited form of CC.

[Arielle]

You mean the choice between Feral Charge and Feral Swiftness when we used to have access to both?

We never had a passive movement speed increase that worked in Bear Form other than boot enchants. There was one for Cat Form, but not Bear Form.

[Bearshield]

I went back and looked for the old talents from TBC and Wrath and you are correct. I guess I must have just taken for granted that the talent affected movement speed for both cat and bear but it originally granted dodge to bear and the movement speed buff to cat. I still disagree with the idea of taking away tools that we at one time had at our disposal and turning them into talents though and Druids are not the only class to have suffered this issue.

[Gothmog]

So we're back to taking massive chunks of damage with our huge healthpools in lieu of having physical damage reduction like other tanks (or Purify). Back to WotlK.

It's a good thing we still have very good rage generation to be able to afford healing it with FR ourselves!

no... wait.. we don't -.-


Healers will not be happy.

[Raugnaut]

With Nov 13 being announced as release, and 6.0 coming to PTR soon, number tunings will be entering the final rounds here shortly. I would suggest that beta people get on forums/tweets/whatever, get feedback broadcasted. There hasn't been a single change to Incarnation and Bristling Fur for bears nearly the entire beta, both of which are very underpreforming for bears compared to other choices in the tier.

[Karnudge]

With Nov 13 being announced as release, and 6.0 coming to PTR soon, number tunings will be entering the final rounds here shortly. I would suggest that beta people get on forums/tweets/whatever, get feedback broadcasted. There hasn't been a single change to Incarnation and Bristling Fur for bears nearly the entire beta, both of which are very underpreforming for bears compared to other choices in the tier.

I've tweeted Celestalon and Holinka, and used to tweet GC, with many Guardian issues. They never seem to care, but I'll keep trying!

[Gemini Soul]

With Nov 13 being announced as release, and 6.0 coming to PTR soon, number tunings will be entering the final rounds here shortly. I would suggest that beta people get on forums/tweets/whatever, get feedback broadcasted. There hasn't been a single change to Incarnation and Bristling Fur for bears nearly the entire beta, both of which are very underpreforming for bears compared to other choices in the tier.

Whats more concerning is the vast amount of threads and posts complaing and talking about how much they hate the travel on the beta forums, and they still haven't reversed it, only giving us bad aid fix. Highly doubt at this stage they will change or fix those talents.

[Dreyen]

Whats more concerning is the vast amount of threads and posts complaing and talking about how much they hate the travel on the beta forums, and they still haven't reversed it, only giving us bad aid fix. Highly doubt at this stage they will change or fix those talents.

They said things are likely to change for flightpaths, like new flightpaths etc.. so they don't want to fix them all just to readjust again later.

Guardians are far from the only spec that requires a serious look at some of their mechanics... mistweaver monks for exemple are outright required to take chi explosion, or their healing is non-existant. Our BM monk does 40% of his dps with chi explosion and is #1 dps as a tank in beta too. give it time.

[Gemini Soul]

They said things are likely to change for flightpaths, like new flightpaths etc.. so they don't want to fix them all just to readjust again later.

Guardians are far from the only spec that requires a serious look at some of their mechanics... mistweaver monks for exemple are outright required to take chi explosion, or their healing is non-existant. Our BM monk does 40% of his dps with chi explosion and is #1 dps as a tank in beta too. give it time.

Meant Travel Form, but yeah numbers tuning will happen. They should make Birstle Fur a replacment for BS for bears, same CD but up the dmg reduction on it and maybe give it something a little extra

[Kujako]

You say the identity of Bears is changing, and I have to ask- what to?

Warrior light. It's been happening for awhile now.

[Dreyen]

Meant Travel Form, but yeah numbers tuning will happen. They should make Birstle Fur a replacment for BS for bears, same CD but up the dmg reduction on it and maybe give it something a little extra

You said they haven'T touched it, but i noticed it's cooldown is going down everytime. I believe it was 2min at first, 1.5min at a point.. now it's 1min, getting pretty nice. I still think it should come with a passive 5% damage reduction or something along those lines..

[Callsignecho]

You said they haven'T touched it, but i noticed it's cooldown is going down everytime. I believe it was 2min at first, 1.5min at a point.. now it's 1min, getting pretty nice. I still think it should come with a passive 5% damage reduction or something along those lines..

It has always been a 1 minute CD. However, it does need a serious overhaul or for Pulverize to get a nerf to its damage reduction.

[Raugnaut]

You said they haven'T touched it, but i noticed it's cooldown is going down everytime. I believe it was 2min at first, 1.5min at a point.. now it's 1min, getting pretty nice. I still think it should come with a passive 5% damage reduction or something along those lines..

It started out as 1 min cd/50% reduction on next 3 hits, but then changed it to 1 min CD/50% reduction next 3 seconds.

That was the ONLY change it has recieved.

[Arielle]

With Nov 13 being announced as release, and 6.0 coming to PTR soon, number tunings will be entering the final rounds here shortly. I would suggest that beta people get on forums/tweets/whatever, get feedback broadcasted. There hasn't been a single change to Incarnation and Bristling Fur for bears nearly the entire beta, both of which are very underpreforming for bears compared to other choices in the tier.

You do realize that tuning continues even past launch, right? The only real "deadline" is when Mythic opens, which is December.